Thursday, May 3, 2012

Father Davis tried to council Niles Caulder as he recovered from his terrible injuries in the hospital, but the Chief just talked circles around him. Madam President Veronica Cale was also peeved with Caulder over his various infractions against Oolong Island, and placed him on house arrest under the guard of her all female force.

Thayer Jost, the corporate sponsor of a previous, largely forgotten 2001 incarnation of the Doom Patrol, was now looking into other avenues. Think super-villainy, beginning with Dr. Amanda Becket, better known as Botfly.

Oberon had apparently been doing well for himself. He was running "Meta Movers," which specialized in the boxing and transport of paranormal materials. He also had a full head of thick brown hair atop his overgrown white sideburns and shoulder length locks. Currently, his team was relocating the contents of Dayton Manor. A looking glass inside peered into another dimension where Danny the Street had been co-opted to devastating effect by a realty corporation.

A battered woman was found wandering the beach of Oolong and taken to the hospital. Father Davis was asked to see her. She refused to relinquish the brick that she was carrying, and offered her only name as Jane. "'Crazy' is an adjective you apply at your peril. Ouch. That came outer harsher than it sounded in my head. Crazy Jane. Okay. I can live with that. Can Cliff come out to play?"

A derelict just looking to enjoy a hamburger in "Podunk" Lowry, Nevada was put out by police surrounding the diner. Negotiations went nowhere, so the derelict sent his fellow patrons out the door before tearing the place apart. The man had become a multi-story combination of a dinosaur, living crystal, and a tree trunk/tentacle. The cops he didn't kill were roasted when stray bullets hit the gas pumps. A woman with a porcelain face and elaborate Victorian-via-Stevie Nicks dress had been watching from afar. Silently, she invited the nude derelict into a stretch limo for a cell phone conversation with Thayer Jost. "Dr. Sven Larsen, A.K.A. the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. We'll have to do something about that name." Some entity had secretly taken possession of Jost, and it had a spirit of brotherhood...

"While You Were Out..." was by Keith Giffen, Matthew Clark and Cliff Richards, with inker John Livesay. The Doom Patrol were also back on the final page, but that's better explained next issue. This was a cool "woo-- machinations" issue, the only flaw being the disparity between Clark's sweet pages and the hot mess that was Richards'. The latter were likely produced in a heated rush under deadline pressure, so no shame in saving someone else's ass.